Inside A Plane to Colombia
by percyjacksonfantothecore
Summary: Natasha's on a plane and she meets a very interesting girl hacker named Skye who teaches her a lot about the Avengers during their flight together. Post TWS.


**Natasha's on a plane and she meets a very interesting girl hacker named Skye who teaches her a lot about the Avengers during their flight together. Post TWS.**

* * *

Natasha Romanoff hated being undercover as much as the next girl (that girl being Melinda May), but even she had to admit having no cover—having blown all covers and all possible ones—was infinitely worse.

No missions. No façade to hide behind. No Clint.

Natasha sighed. She had missed him a lot over the course of her journey with Rogers. She worried constantly over him; she liked to wonder whether he was safe or not. And she didn't even know where he was.

And with Congress on her tail, she could hardly go off gallivanting to find Clint without raising a couple eyes of suspicion. These days, she heard even Maria couldn't go a full 4 minutes alone without having a SWAT team swarm her.

No, no. All Natasha had to do was sit tight until another Loki-worthy catastrophe struck and then she'd be in business. Which is how Natasha had ended up here, on a plane to Colombia. Vacation, the official reason she'd given to prying eyes.

Natasha settled into her stuffy coach seat. She was oddly nervous, this being the first time she'd ever flown without weapons stuffed in her bag.

Damn airport security.

Natasha closed her eyes, humming a sweet tune to herself. Bored. She was so bored. Was this really what normal people did with their lives?

"Um, excuse me?" came the shy, timid voice of a girl. Natasha's eyes flickered to life, analyzing the girl in front of her. What? She just wanted to make sure she wasn't rusty.

She wore a red and black loose flannel plaid shirt, and black worn out leggings with holes at the knees. Her hair was in gentle waves, thinning to about midway, starting dark brown and ending with chestnut. She wore only a backpack and clutched her laptop tight to her chest as if she couldn't live without it.

Natasha wanted to snort. Many Level 1 agents she met from Communications were just like this.

"I think you're in my seat," she was saying, pursing her lips.

Natasha blinked, pulling up her ticket information to look at it. "Oh, yeah. Sorry," she apologized, scooting over to her proper seat by the window. The girl settled into her seat like nothing had happened. Natasha winced at the noise she was making. Clearly she'd never had an SO to train her the proper way.

But she was normal, Natasha reminded herself. She's a civilian…with a laptop. Neither SHIELD nor HYDRA.

Lucky her.

There were only two seats in their row, so Natasha figured she was stuck with this girl until the plane landed. And it hadn't even taken off.

The girl balanced her laptop on her legs, and flipped it open, beginning to type.

Natasha risked a glance at her keyboard. She blinked; this girl typed _really _fast, almost too fast for even Natasha to discern the individual letters and numbers that consisted of her password.

She saw her type in another password, and then another.

Hmph. Guess she was a lot tighter on security than most people.

Still, what intrigued Natasha the most was her wallpaper. 6 people linked in a tight circle, together, none of them quite ordinary. One was encased in a metal suit of ostentatious red and gold, another in a fabric suit of patriotic colors. Another wore a medieval red cape and a bright silver hammer, and another wore next to nothing at all, its skin green…everywhere. And the last the two—the man donned a bow and arrow, and the woman only a pistol. They all stared up at the rubble around them—unmistakably, New York. Alien warships flew in the background.

Oh, yeah, and one of those people was Natasha, her fiery red hair a bright beacon against the desolate background.

Natasha thanked her lucky stars she'd tucked up her bright hair into the baseball cap she was wearing currently—a spare of Steve's. Still, her curiosity got the better of her. "Who are they?" she wondered.

The girl looked up, clearly startled by her. "Oh, you don't know? These are the Avengers," she explained.

That they are, thought Natasha, agreeing. "The ones who saved New York, right?"

She nodded. "The world owes a lot to them."

"You believe in them?" Natasha inquired skeptically. "What makes you think they aren't a bunch of freaks?"

"I'm sure they are," she said, laughing. "But, hey, my philosophy is if the freaks can run the world, why not let them?"

Natasha had to crack a smile at that, the first since the Triskelion mess.

"I'm Skye, by the way," she introduced.

Now, the tricky part. Natasha could lie really well; she could be anybody. She could say Natalie, Natasha, Nora, Marcy, or even say Gladys… "Tasha," she said, surprising herself. "Call me Tasha."

Skye grinned. "Okay, Tasha. What do you do for a living?"

More tricky questions. "I…travel," she said. It was true. She traveled around a lot for her missions. "Well," she amended, "I used to travel, but then I kind of lost my job."

"You got fired?"

Natasha shook her head. "More like the whole organization crumbled."

Skye nodded understandingly. "Yeah, similar thing happened with my old job. I guess I still have it, but well, all our resources were cut off."

"You in IT?" asked Natasha.

"Something like that," she said cryptically. "We're rebuilding, though. We have a new Director—" At this, Natasha's head snapped up, "—er, Manager," she finished lamely.

"What happened to the old one?"

"The official reason is he died. I still think he's taking down German uprising," she confided, lowering her voice.

Natasha blinked. "Nick Fury?" she whispered, her lips barely moving at all.

Skye—whatever her name was—gave the faintest of nods. "Level 1," she said.

"Level 6," Natasha whispered back.

Recognition flared in the young girl's eyes. "Then you don't know…never mind."

"What?"

"Well, it was nice talking to you," Skye said very suddenly. "I've got to use the bathroom," she announced, picking up her backpack. She stuffed her laptop into it, and slung it over her shoulder. "Bye," she said.

Natasha's mind whirled. "What do you mean, bye?" she hissed.

Skye focused on her with eerily lucid eyes. "I mean, I'm leaving. As a friend of mine once suggested, the best way to go on the run would be to take the Newark to Singapore flight and drop down in the middle somewhere using the emergency chute. If I don't drop within the next 5 minutes, I will most decidedly miss my meeting with my coworkers in Florida and it will be your fault I drown in the ocean."

Natasha blinked. "Who told you that?"

Skye grinned. "Melinda May and Phil Coulson," she said, standing up to _use the bathroom. _"Nice meeting you, Natasha Romanoff." She left, disappearing down the aisle.

Natasha sat there for a long time in a daze, wondering what had just happened. It took her even longer than that to figure out she'd never actually told Skye her name.

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Thanks for reading!


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